2nd info-bomb for Davidson Board on Griffith Hotel - It is all about safety!

aShortChronicle has spent a good bit of time covering the parking issues inherent with any development on the property next to the Community School of Davidson on Griffith Street.  It's a subject involving planning and town ordinances, areas where years of following Davidson Town Hall has imparted a bit of experience.  However, with the specific proposal of placing a hotel next to a school the issue of safety has always been the elephant in the room.  Frankly, it is an area of great concern, but it is not one that has been delved into in these pages due to a lack of experience in the area.

After Tuesday night's meeting where Davidson's Board received an update on stakeholder feedback regarding the hotel project, an update where safety was barely mentioned, Davidson's Board and staff received the below email from Fred Dalton.  Mr Dalton has given permission to aShortChronicle to post the comments here.  Mr Dalton can claim years of experience in the hotel industry.  He is also the person who previously sent the Board the information in this post about the viability of a new hotel.

His comments touch on both subjects, safety and viability, and how they are connected.

The email is addressed to Trey Akers in the Town's Planning Department, but all of the Board and senior staff were also copied.  His comments start immediately below.

Trey,

I wanted to take a moment to reach back out to you, and the board, possibly to clear up a misunderstanding as I see it.

You see, I mistakenly thought that you were listening.

If you were listening, you would have heard that for parents at CSD, parking is not the primary concern with this issue. If you had been listening, you would have realized that stakeholders are not concerned about bicycles, or sidewalks. The primary concern is safety. Safety is not just a ‘bullet point’ concern in a governmental power point equal to and alongside bike sharing. 

I am listening, and parents are concerned about their children, and residents are concerned about the quality of life in their neighborhood.

I am listening, and I have not yet met one person that wants a hotel built on that site. I have not yet met one person that doesn’t believe that the notion is completely insane. A vast majority of people that I speak to are not opposed to progress, or development. From my perspective, the average CSD parent has always known that parking would one day become an issue that would need to be addressed. The owner of that land has always had the right to develop it. 

I am listening to you too, and the debate at this point in the process should not be about the diameter of the tree trunks, or sidewalk width, or Bobcats running over tree roots as we heard last night. The debate, which has not yet been settled, is simply this: Should the site be re-zoned to allow a hotel to be built as opposed to retail or office space. We can all get back to discussing tree trunks afterwards.

As a parent, I am much less concerned about where I will need to park when I go to my kids’ school as I am about the individual that prefers to drink at a rooftop hotel bar during the day while watching my kids play. (Yes, I am aware that this version of the plans exclude the rooftop bar, but it is apparent that there are some on the board that would like to see it reinstated for the "viability" of the hotel)

As my email from August 18^th was mentioned during the meeting, and due to the exclusion of community comments on the agenda, allow me to respond.

A board member accused me of having a lack of understanding about capitalism and the role government should play. Please rest assured that I believe, as was clearly on display last night, government is the problem. The commissioner was correct in stating that government should not be in the position of choosing winners and losers. I could not agree more. However, the fact that this was the response to my email reinforces the fact to us that you are not listening. By granting this developer a de facto waiver by re-zoning this lot is exactly that. 

You are using the power of government to decide that this particular developer will win by changing the rules for him. By ignoring the overarching debate and the unanimous opposition to the change in zoning, you are deciding that the parents and residents will lose. Has any developer ever been turned down by the Town of Davidson due to land use zoning?  

The role of local government in commerce and development should include, first and foremost, proper land use through zoning. A developer that wants to build a hotel and bar next to an elementary school is the precise reason local government zoning restrictions exist. The ability to prevent this from happening it is one of the primary reasons city planning exists.

Local government should never re-zone land use in the face of risk to public safety unless in the case of absolute desperation, in the case of immediate need with no other available options or remedy. The information I provided to the board was not only intended to highlight the pending misfortunes of a developing investor though the analysis of someone who consults many investors just like him. It was to highlight the complete lack of urgency, demand or need for this change in zoning to facilitate this use at the cost of student and resident safety.

Again, allow me to repeat myself to make sure that I am heard. Parking is not the primary concern. Parking is a concern that we can all work together to find a solution. The concern is the threat to the safety of children and residents that is inherent to hotels.

As stakeholder input was removed from the agenda, allow me to present to you a comment I had prepared in the event I was given the opportunity to be heard:

My name is Fred Dalton, a CSD parent with nearly 20 years of experience in the hotel industry across a wide range of brands and markets in hotel operations management, new hotel development and construction, asset management and receivership, property evaluation and feasibility research, ownership and management team consultation and market analysis.

I wish that I could come here tonight to talk about the unimaginable horrors that I have personally experienced and witnessed behind the scenes in this dirty industry, but you’ve already been informed.  

I wish that I could talk to you about the husband who sat in his wife’s hotel room in the middle of the day, shotgun pointed, waiting to take the life of his wife as she walked through the door with another man... but you know these things happen.  I wish I could tell you about the children that my staff suspected were being abused or held against their will… but you already know about that. I wish I could come here tonight to tell you about the rampant prostitution that was and still is just a normal part of the day in this industry. I wish I could tell you about the murder, the suicide, the kidnapping and the rape that are commonplace in hotel rooms.

I wish I could tell you about the constant occurrences of drug use, the drug deals, the drug busts, the drug manufacturing that went on under the roofs that I managed. I would tell you all of this and more if I thought it would make a difference, but if it did, this project would have never been considered. You see, you already know that a hotel has no business being in an elementary school zone.

I don’t need to talk to you about the threat of sexual predators both in the guest rooms and on the payroll, I don’t need to tell you about the parking, or the traffic, or the light pollution, or the trees, or the alcohol… you’ve heard all of this and yet you still might move forward.

Instead, I will focus on an aspect of this project that seems that you have not been properly informed, or you have simply relied on the data supplied by the developer. Profit, or the potential of. I provided the board via email on August 18^thwith information that I was able to easily collect using publicly available data that brings serious doubt to the feasibility of this project. I will assume that you have all reviewed this data and will take the necessary steps to easily verify its accuracy. Unless the board or developer can defend otherwise using validated third party analysis, I have shown that there is no legitimate need for additional hotels in Davidson. Using simple economics, the increase in the supply will not create demand. In short, The Town of Davidson would need to create the demand for an additional 30,000 room nights in order for this project to be considered feasible while not reducing the developer’s current revenue at his existing property.

Additional information needs to be considered:

-          What is the estimated turn cost and break-even point indicated in the developer’s financial business plan? How does that number compare to industry averages of like-sized hotels and how does that match up with his reported estimation of the number of full time and part time employees? (I’ll give you a hint: The numbers don’t work)

-          What are the primary demand generators listed in the developer’s 5 and 10-year marketing plans? What is his estimated segmentation and market mix that will make up the 30,000 room nights he needs on top of what he is drawing at the Homewood? Which corporate accounts will produce enough rooms that are not simply ‘moved’ from the Homewood?

In my experience, the most common pattern of developers that are knowingly increasing the supply in a market that shows no forecasted increase in demand is this: They plan on selling the existing hotel based on valuations from past business levels. The profits of the sale can be considerable. The developer can then easily shift that demand, and new capital, to the new property. This is a practice that is common in smaller markets when an owner is given the option to renovate or build new. It’s a proven and profitable strategy.

This most likely scenario has no net positive impact to the Town’s occupancy tax revenues which I unfortunately suspect that for the Town of Davidson… is the one aspect of this project that matters.